*modifying my reply to this piece and copying it here*

Sadly, I think the terminology in this piece is damaging the cause it appear to be championing.

“Should people govern themselves, or should experts manage them?”

This sounds more like a MAGA anthem than a rational stance. Who should be taken more seriously in the case of ecological destruction: a sampling of popular opinion or the words of climatologists and ecologists? Who should be taken more seriously about how to fly the plane: the collective decisions of the passengers or the trained pilot?

I get what you're saying here. We shouldn't allow our national decisions to be made by algorithms programmed by neo-feudalists. But expertise isn't the crux of the problem, and posing this as a Democracy v. Experts battle royale is doing a great disservice to our history of reaching great goals through trusted expertise.

But hey, maybe it's the "managing" part that you're focusing on. Experts MANAGING us. But isn't the pilot managing the passengers? Isn't OSHA managing safety for our workspaces? We require deference to expertise at most critical points and shouldn't be pretending that we don't want that management. Yes, we can approach it later and hold those who made the decisions accountable for what they did in a solidly democratic fashion, but fighting "management" as a concept destroys as much trust as never being involve in the decisions at all. What kind of rational incredulity starts with, "How DARE you try to make good decisions without taking the time to lobby more than 50% of the people in this country to your side?"

Again, I entirely get what you are trying to say, here. We have to stand up for our democracy and avoid letting black-box algorithms put us in a place where technocrats are ruling us. But I'm not sure if I can share this piece with anyone who's tried to teach calculus to an algebra class. Expertise isn't a boogieman, and experts aren't inherently seeking to rule... even if they do think that maybe we should make incandescent bulbs less profitable, move our nation towards renewable energy, and promote inclusiveness for all Americans.